Armour - Chapter Six
Summary: You and Rafe were finally making things work, after a decade of waiting, it felt like paradise. But life always came flying at you far too soon, and real life caught up with the fantasy before you had a chance to stop it.
Warnings: Mentions of pregnancy issues / worries (everything's okay in the end), Rafe being reluctant to communicate (i'm sorry)
Author’s Note: I love writing this series oh my daysssss!! I'm sorry this has taken so long to post - I moved countries again and it's been a stress to sort out <3 love y'all
“I don’t know if I prefer your hair like this or not,” You mumble to Rafe softly, running your fingers along the frame of his face, across his cropped hairline.
“No?” He raises his eyebrows gently, looking up at you, trailing his fingertips along the skin of your upper arm, along your shoulder and tracing your collarbone.
“I liked your long hair, it was cute,” You return, looking down on him as your arms propped you up on the bed next to him.
Rafe had one arm tucked underneath his head on the pillow, gazing lazily at your every move under the dim light of the morning sun coming through the curtains. The sheets hung loose around your shoulders, constantly wrinkled and tangled from how much Rafe moved in his sleep.
“This makes you look more…” You run your fingers over his buzzcut, “Hot.”
“Hot?” Rafe laughs, “I’ll take that as a good thing.”
You lean down and press a kiss to his jaw, “Okay, we should probably get up.”
“We should,” Rafe furrows his brows a little, removing his arm from under his head to sneak around your waist, pulling you over on top of him quickly.
You let out an involuntary squeal as he buries his head into your neck, peppering every inch of skin with kisses.
Five more minutes.
———
“Good morning!” Rafe calls out as the two of you walk downstairs, him following behind you.
You’d been staying at Sarah’s for the past week since Rafe had come home, he’d taken the week off of work and made the most of getting to spend every minute with you.
“Morning lovebirds,” John B returns, sitting at the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee in front of him.
You roll your eyes at him and head over to the fridge, “Do you fancy eggs?” You offer to Rafe as he walks over to pour out two mugs of coffee from the pot.
He nods in enthusiastic response as you take out the box of eggs and a pan from the cupboard.
John B steps outside with a mumble about ‘leaving you two lovebirds to it’. Lovebirds - he’d decided it was the perfect way of describing you two.
Rafe comes up behind you and swings an arm around your side, a coffee mug in hand for you as his chin rests on your shoulder.
“Here you go darling,” He presses a kiss to your neck as you take the cup from him.
“Darling?” You smirk to yourself, turning around against him so that your back is against the kitchen counter.
“Darling,” Rafe confirms, kissing your forehead before stepping away from you.
This is what it was supposed to feel like. This is what the bliss should be. In the tiny moments, there should be that flutter in your heart like you were falling in love all over again. And that’s how Rafe had made you feel from the moment he’d kissed you on the dock. It felt like he’d healed a part of yourself that thought love like this was simply fictional. And he’d been doing more and more healing every day since then - healing the small parts with each kiss. You’d never felt like this. Never felt warmth the way you did when he held you, or nerves the way you did when he complimented you, or passion the way you did when his eyes were on you. It was everything in the moments of nothing. It was sunlight.
“So, what did you have planned for today?” You ask him as the eggs sizzle in the pan in front of you, watching as Rafe sticks four slices of toast into the toaster.
“Well, I’m meant to be having a call from my boss at some point this morning, and then maybe we can do something later?” He suggests.
“Sure,” You nod, “But you have to decide what we do.”
He chuckles, “Always so indecisive (Y/L/N).”
The two of you return to domestic bliss, he refills your coffee cups and you finish up the eggs, he butters the toast and you get out two plates to dish up the food. You sit next to each other at the kitchen counter and Rafe kisses you quickly as a thank you for the food. This is bliss. This is sunlight.
———
Rafe disappears soon after breakfast to take the call from his boss. As much as this past week had been incredible, you knew reality would return soon. Though, neither you or Rafe had spoken about it just yet, you knew he would have to leave. Logic would return and rationale would slip in and you’d have to make adult decisions beyond the chaos and peace of the past couple of months. James had told you that the house was almost sold, just the final few steps of the process. And all that meant was that you’d finally have to decide where to settle yourself. Was home still here in the Outer Banks? Or did you still need to get away?
“I’m so fed up of being pregnant,” Sarah groans, waddling over to where you were sat on one of the chairs on the decking at the back of their house.
She had a month left to go and you couldn’t blame her for being impatient.
“Don’t you think it’s going to be crazy when you’ve got a baby in the house?” You smile at her, setting down the book in your hands to turn your attention to her.
“Are you kidding? I’ve already got to deal with Rafe, nothing can be as bad as that.”
You laugh, “Sorry we’ve kind of taken up the house a bit, I know it’s not ideal. But we’ll be ou-“
“Hey, no, don’t even try to apologise, you know we love having you here,” She encourages, reaching over to squeeze your arm, “Plus, it makes things a lot easier now that you and Rafe have stopped the whole ‘never going to happen’ thing.”
You laugh again, looking down at your hands in your lap, “Yeah, it took us a while.”
“I’m so glad it’s finally happened, though. You guys have always been perfect for each other.”
The words settle a strange tension onto your chest - an uncertainty. Perfect. She wasn’t wrong; it felt like that at the minute. It felt perfect. But there was still so much to think about. Rafe would be going back to New York, you still needed to find somewhere to live, you needed to decide where you wanted that to be, what your next path was. There was everything and more to think about if you thought beyond this moment right here.
“Hey!” You look up to see Rafe stood in the doorway, his head poking around the frame of the glass, “I’m all done, do you want to head out?”
His eyes are soft, brows raised a little as he awaits your response. His tan has brought out his freckles across his cheeks, prominent as if they’re kissing at his skin.
“Yeah, okay,” You smile lightly in return, standing up from your chair, “I’ll see you later, yeah?”
Sarah looks up at the two of you and nods, “Have fun!”
When you reach him, Rafe’s hand reaches out for yours instantly and laces your fingers together, squeezing quickly. You walk alongside him and he waits as you get your shoes on, taking your hand back as soon as he gets the chance.
“How did it go with your boss?” You ask him as the two of you walk out of the house.
Rafe shrugs his shoulders just a little, “It was okay.”
You stop in your tracks on the driveway, “Okay?”
He turns in his spot and looks at you, smiling a little, “It’s work stuff, it’s all boring I promise. It was fine.”
“If you say so,” You return, “So what did you want to do today?”
“Let’s take a walk,” Rafe squeezes your hand again and lifts your interlocked hands up and over so that his arm rests around your shoulders, fingers linked with his over your chest.
You lean your head just a little back against his shoulder as the two of you walk, welcoming the breeze as it swept through the trees. The streets were relatively silent, as they always were, and the sound of boats ripping through the water was just audible over the quiet hum of the town. You could trace these streets with your eyes closed, follow the same routes as you had done when you were a child to when you grew up and started sneaking out. The same trees towered over you as they had done when you’d first learnt to walk on these roads, the same concrete under feet just more aged and bumpy now. You could pinpoint the exact point where you’d cut through to make it to school on time, the same place you’d wait out when you were skipping school for the day. All of these places were practically engrained into your mind, confirming the certainty that this would always be home.
“Where exactly are we going?” You ask Rafe as he turns the corner, ducking underneath a low hanging branch.
“Can’t we just be walking? Taking in the scenery or whatever,” He shrugs his shoulders, looking down at you.
You laugh a little, “No, I can do that, you hate doing that. What’s the point? I’ve seen it all already,” You mock him in an excessively deep voice, one that doesn’t sound remotely like him.
Rafe pokes at your side, “Uncanny impression.”
You giggle and he grips your hand tighter to stop you from pulling away from him, “I’m not wrong, though. Where are we going?”
He rolls his eyes, “Stop asking questions. We’re walking.”
“If you say so,” You settle back under his arm and he looks down at you with a light smirk, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.
And that’s what you do - just walk.
———
Eventually, Rafe slows and turns down towards the water, the rockier side of the beach. He reaches out a hand for you as you climb across the stones and try to avoid losing your balance on the uneven surface until he stops just on the edge where the rocks meet the water. There’s a flatter one just a little higher than where the water crashes against them and Rafe takes a seat down, hand still held out to help you sit.
“Okay, so you did have a place in mind,” You comment, “I knew you couldn’t just go for a walk.”
Rafe sits silently, a little smile on his lips, staring out at the way the water wraps around the rocks underneath you.
You nudge his shoulder just gently, “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” Rafe leans back on his arms, “Nothing’s going on.”
You remain sat forward, not responding as you tug your shoes and socks off and set them down on the rock beside you, letting your feet dangle down over the edge so that they dip just underneath the surface of the water.
“Tell me.”
“(Y/N), I’m serious there’s nothi-“
“Okay, we can keep doing this, the whole back and forth, or you could just tell me what’s going on,” You roll your eyes, looking back at him.
Rafe looks forward at you with a smile toying at his lips, like a realisation of exactly the hold that you had over him.
“I spoke to my boss,” The words come out as something just over a whisper, like it pains him to say it.
“Yeah,” You furrow your brows a little, “I know that.”
“I asked him if I could work remotely for a while, stay here for a bit longer,” He takes a deep breath, “But they need me back in New York on Monday.”
Rafe’s eyes flick between each of yours as if he’s preparing for a dreaded response.
“Okay, weren’t we planning on that?” You frown a little, “Wasn’t that always going to happen?”
“(Y/N), come on, I just got back,” He practically winces, “I mean, we just got back. This is the first time in years we’ve been in the same place, ready and willing to commit to this. And it’s just started, and I’ll be leaving again.”
You shift slightly in his direction, the furrow in your brows deepening.
“It worked when you were in London, but that was before we’d been together. Now? What? I stay another couple of days and then I leave again, and we go back to calling every few hours and not getting to see each other, and then I come back and I go again?”
“Rafe, come on, we knew this was going to be the case. You’re there and I’m here, that was always going to happen. We can make it work,” You shrug your shoulders, “Why wouldn’t we make it work?”
He takes a deep breath and reaches one of his hands forward, running his fingertips up and down the soft skin of your arm, leaving goosebumps in the absence of the gentle touch, “Distance is hard, (Y/N), and we’ve only just started - do we really want to risk that?”
“Okay,” You take a deep breath, shifting around to properly face him, crossing your legs underneath you, “Let’s look at this logically.”
“I am loo-“
“Ah!” You press a finger to his lips, “I’m talking.”
He smiles against your finger, pressing a kiss to your knuckle before you pull your hand away.
“We knew each other for ten years before you told me you loved me. In that time, we’d spent months without talking, I was in a relationship that I thought would last, I went to college, you moved to New York, I got broken up with, I moved to London, it goes on and on and on,” You pause to take a breath, “And yet we still found a way back to each other. Time and time again there’ve been obstacles that convince us this shouldn’t work, and every time we’ve managed to prove that wrong.”
He smiles again a little, his eyes not once tearing away from you.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do - about the house, about my job, about staying in the Outer Banks,” You shake your head, “But you need to go back to New York and, until I figure out what’s going on, I need to stay here. We can call, and meet in the middle, and facetime and do whatever we need to - at least until we figure it all out.”
Rafe reaches a hand over and brushes his fingers over your cheek as he tucks your hair behind your ear, holding his hand over the side of your face for just a moment, “Are you really willing to do the whole distance thing again? Like, actually as a couple this time.”
You lean into his hand a little, breathing deeply so that you can see the way the air rises and falls in your chest, “You don’t need to ask about me. Are you?”
Before there is even the hint of a response from Rafe, your phone starts buzzing in your pocket.
You pull it out and see John B’s contact come up on your screen, answering instinctively.
“Hello?”
“Hey, thank fuck,” He’s breathless on the other end of the phone and you can hear the distant sound of cars flying past him, “Okay, I don’t know what’s going on but Sarah’s having some bad pains and we’re going to the hospital because we don’t know what it is and we-“
“Okay, put the phone down, we’ll meet you at the hospital.”
He breathes out a heavy sigh of relief, “Thank you.”
And the call ends.
You had a way of dealing with stress when it was projected onto you from other people - like your brain kicked into overdrive and you suddenly needed to focus on nothing else. Your worries about Rafe’s response just seem to disappear almost instantly; not quite forgotten.
“We need to go, we need to get to the hospital,” You comment, focused on the worry settling on every feature of Rafe’s face.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” He nods, “My Dad’s place isn’t far, we’ll take his car.”
And both of you do exactly that, forgetting any conversation that needed to be had for a worry that mattered much more.
———
The drive to the hospital is rapid and silent, Rafe runs a red light when there’s no other cars on the road - that sort of anger that only ever came to him when it came to his family, specifically Sarah and Wheezie. In those moments it was like every inhibition, every calm ounce of him just seemed to leave, to dissipate. You saw it more when he was younger, age seemingly mellowing him.
Both of you get out of the car and head straight into the hospital - small and never really crowded. There’s a doctor you’re sure had been the same one here when you’d broken your leg as a kid, and another young nurse who was in the year above you at school. In the midst of all the scrubs and uniforms, John B is pacing back and forth across the waiting room, hand shaking through his long hair, shorts dirtied with mud and sawdust from whatever household project he’d last started. His eyes brighten just slightly when he sees the two of you.
“Thank god!” He sighs outwardly, striding over, “They told me I couldn’t be in there.”
“What? You’re the father why can’t you be in there?” Rafe exclaims, his eyes heating with the fury that was poking through.
“Apparently I’m too stressed,” John B rolls his eyes, “I just want them to tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay, well if they’re not saying anything yet then just assume that it can’t be too serious,” You take a deep breath, “And sit down at least before you burn a hole in this floor.”
He looks at you with melting rage as if he’s about to blow but it softens, his shoulders relaxing, “Yeah, yeah, you’re right.”
The three of you sit down and there’s a silly little sinking in your chest when you sit down on one side and Rafe opts to take the seat opposite, beside John B instead of you. He doesn’t make eye contact with you and, when you think about it, you’re not sure if he has since you asked him the simple words ‘Are you?’.
You suppress it.
It’s another ten minutes at least, a small infinity when you’re flooded with worry. Rafe hadn’t spoken a word to you, and his eyes had rarely moved up from focusing and a crack in the tiles of the floor. You’ve spent every second of the last ten minutes trying to convince yourself it was something you could ignore. Another couple of minutes pass once more before the door opens and the doctor steps out.
“What’s going on? Is she okay? Is the baby okay?” John B stumbles out of his chair, glancing past the doctor as if hoping to get a glimpse of her in the room.
“Everything is quite alright,” The doctor affirms, “We believe it is just a severe case of Braxton Hick’s - some women don’t feel anything, others have contraction pains as if in labor without the labor process starting. Ms Cameron is perfectly fine, just in a touch of pain still.”
“Okay, okay, thank you,” He sighs in relief, “Can I go and see her?”
“Of course you can,” The doctor beams, stepping aside to let John B pass, “You’re all welcome to.”
You stand up instantly to follow behind where John B had just walked, glancing back to see Rafe still sat down, “Are you coming?”
“Um,” He clears the dryness from his throat, “I’ll be there in a minute.”
You feel a lump form in your own throat but force a light smile, “Okay, yeah.”
You suppress it.
You’re with Sarah for a little while, sharing in her relief that nothing was wrong. John B sits on the edge of the chair, his arm around her like he’s thankful to be back by her side.
“I’m just going to get some air,” You comment, “Or a drink, or something.”
They both nod and Sarah reaches out to squeeze your hand before you go, the door shutting behind you.
Rafe isn’t sat in the seats in the waiting room, in fact, he’s nowhere to be seen. You take a seat where he had been sat before, dragging a hand through your hair.
It wasn’t like anything had happened, had it? You just didn’t know what to expect - and that was the problem. Rafe seemed so sure that the distance between you would be a terrible idea, that it would ruin everything you’d worked to build since he’d first told you he loved you. But why should it? You didn’t want anybody else, and that wouldn’t change as soon as he moved back to New York. Plus, what problem is there with a plane ticket?
Before you can force yourself to think about it for any longer, you see the glimpse of a shadow passing the windows beside you, turning your eyes in that direction just as Rafe comes to settle in front of you. He perches himself on the armrest of your chair.
"Hi," The word comes out as a whisper when he looks at you, a sort of innocence to the moment that you don't want to lose.
"Hi."
His eyes scan you as if he hasn't seen you in a short forever, like he's observing you.
"So, are we going to sit here in silence or are you going to tell me what's happening?" You whisper once again, not wanting to be the one to break just yet.
"I should've answered you earlier, and I didn't," Rafe takes a deep breath, "I am."
"Come on Rafe, it's been hours, I need more than that," You shake your head, looking away from him.
Rafe catches your hand in his, his fingers enveloping around the soft skin, "I am willing to do this long distance, if you are."
You glance up at him again.
"I just got scared that I couldn't be enough for you if I wasn't here and we weren't seeing each other and we were working separately and living separately and everything," He shakes his head, "But I was stupid, and I should've just told you about it instead of shutting down. I'm just... this is... it's... it's too good to lose."
"Then why wouldn't we make this work long distance?" You laugh, turning your hand in his so that you can squeeze his hand back, "That is literally the definition of not losing this."
He laughs in return, "Yeah, yeah, you're right. I'm an idiot," His lips break into a smile, beaming down at you, "It's taken us long enough already to get to here, it's not like we need to be in a rush for anything."
You shake your head, "Nope."
He leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead, and you let your eyes flutter shut under the contact.
As your eyes open, there's a midwife wheeling through a hospital crib with a baby inside wrapped in a tiny pink blanket, a little white hat poking above the wrap.
"Without rushing, I definitely want one of those one day," Rafe grins, glancing back at you.
"Oh yeah?"
He nods, "Seeing Sarah going through all of this, it makes me think I could do it too. You know, do a better job than my parents did."
You squeeze his hand again, "I think we'd be great."
He leans down and kisses you slowly, longingly, and every fear you'd been holding onto for the last couple of hours disappeared.
Sure, the distance would suck. There'd be days when you'd struggle, days when you thought even just for a moment that it might not be worth it. But Rafe, this, everything that you two had, would always be worth it. For the way your heart fluttered at the touch of his kiss, it would always be worth it.
------
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